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> It's often hard for men to understand the societal pressure placed on women to be accommodating and not be rude and how this can be manipulated to constrain f
by fpgaminer 11y ago
> It's often hard for men to understand the societal pressure placed on women to be accommodating and not be rude and how this can be manipulated to constrain female agency in the world.
Sorry, but I'm going to have to call out this statement as sexist. There are also several other strange "facts" being passed around in other comments which are similarly biased. To be clear, I'm not calling you sexist. In fact, I think your comment makes a great point about submission to societal pressures leading to these sorts of problems.
Getting back to the quoted statement, I strongly suspect both genders are equally susceptible to being manipulated by societal pressures. I also don't think men find it hard to understand this. If there's data to show otherwise, I welcome it. In its absence, I believe it more wise to hold this neutral view rather than perpetuating a gender bias.
Let's use Curb Your Enthusiasm as a means to elucidate my argument. The lead character in that show gets into all manner of uncomfortable and disastrous situations as a result of bending to societal pressures; not wanting to be "rude". The lead character is male and I'll bet more guys than not can relate. Perhaps not to the same scale as what is portrayed in the show, because the show is meant to be entertaining, but perhaps more on the level of The Office (US) awkwardness.
So I doubt that societal malleability differs between the genders. You're still right in bringing it up, though, because indeed this habit of not wanting to be rude is clearly a contributing factor to cyberstalking cases. I just don't think it's what leads to a greater number of females being victims versus males.
- scott_s 11y agoBoth genders receive societal pressure. But they receive different societal pressure. It is not sexist to suggest that members of a gender many not understand the particulars of the pressure experienced by the other gender.
- anupamsr 11y agoGet married. See the true societal pressure.
- prawn 11y agoI agree that men also feel pressure to accommodate requests they might rather not. I think it can arise due to an imbalance of whatever sort. I've been in that position with males with whom I didn't want to escalate a situation and with males while on their home turf (say, in a strange country). But I tend not to fear being assaulted by a woman or tricked/trapped by a woman in a foreign country. People routinely get scammed because they are too polite or fearful to say no or walk away. Females might feel that imbalance a little more?
- dandelany 11y agoIt is not sexist to observe that, in many or most societies on Earth, men and women are systematically treated differently in many social and professional contexts. Nor is it "perpetuating a gender bias" to posit that some of this difference in experiences between the genders may cause one group to be more affected by some societal pressures than the other. I'm not saying it is one way or the other. Regardless, playing the sexism/bias card here is overreacting: you have one hypothesis, OP has another, neither of you has presented any evidence or argument. Larry David doesn't count.
- hueving 11y agoThat's not what is being called sexist. What is sexist is claiming men can't understand societal pressures.
- scott_s 11y agoAnd no one is claiming that. What is being claimed is that it is hard for men to understand this particular societal pressure that women experience. That is, if a man understands the concepts of societal pressures, they still may not be immediately aware of this societal pressure; it may not be obvious to them, as they do not experience it.
- varjag 11y agoHow many men end up kept in bunkers against their will by women?
- dracht 11y agoHow many women can physically dominate an average man?
- JulianMorrison 11y agoHumans aren't averages. A randomly chosen woman will almost always have some fraction of men out there she can physically dominate. And some women are just plain tough and could physically impose on nearly all men. And yet men don't worry and walk faster when the woman they're alone with in the parking lot looks like she could bench a truck.
- oldmanjay 11y agoI'm not certain what your point was intended to be, but human men are far stronger than human women with very rare exception. A randomly chosen women is unlikely to be able to physically dominate any man at all, absent deformity. The difference is quite stark. Certainly a highly trained female body builder is an exception, but they are also vanishingly rare in the population and very unlikely to be randomly chosen. Sorry. This is one area that feminism doesn't cover with its hypothesis of equality.
- varjag 11y agoI'm not sure what this whole chain of reasoning has to do with the argument at hand. Most of the violence and rape committed to male victims has male perpetrators. Does it follow that most men can overpower an average man? Are feminists still to blame here?
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoDo we count the men she can get help using social leverage? One only needs to watch the videos of domestic violence experiments where they swap genders. The reactions show that while men might be able to win if they were isolated on an island, the total power within society is not in the man's favor. Unless you are in a culture which tolerates DV regardless of gender, in which case men do have it better.
- jahewson 11y ago> I strongly suspect both genders are equally susceptible to being manipulated by societal pressures. Sure but which gender does society place more pressures on?
- wutbrodo 11y agoI won't pretend that I know what the answer to this is, but the idea that the answer is evident is fucking absurd. Gender roles cut quite sharply both ways, and the only way to think otherwise is willful ignorance: for one extremely obvious example to anyone with even a second of thought, how often do you see men crying?
- okasaki 11y agoThe one with 3x more suicides?
- YouYouMeMe 11y agoPerhaps the one that is absent from any group of older people in the mall because it dies 5 years earlier? The one that is most often sent to war? The one that has substantial more suicides?
- dragonwriter 11y ago> Sure but which gender does society place more pressures on? I'm not sure that there is a good, unambiguous, and meaningful way of doing a unidimensional quantification of that to make that comparison. Its probably better to recognize that each gender has different socially-imposed expectations, that create problems in different situations and present different opportunities for conflicts with between internal preferences and drives and external expectations. You can then meaningfully discuss differences (including "which gender is more affected") between pressures in particular contexts, such as pressures to accommodate social advances in situations that compromise personal safety, without getting into a competition on the vague issue of "which gender is exposed to more social pressures" in some murky overall sense.
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoWhich gender gets killed most often at work because of a social pressure that your value is determined by having a job, so if the only job options are dangerous, you best take one anyways? Unless we can get a well defined and agreed upon definition of 'more social pressed' and a way to measure such, we could spend all day running in circles on this issue.
- KaiserPro 11y agoyou're railing against the observation, making discussion of the causes difficult and therefore possible solution discovery possible. If we are to tackle social problems, we can't argue about language of the problem for fear of being branded as *ist we don't do this about high blood pressure, or diabetes. The way you are arguing is actually a logical extension of the original observation in the parent. The original statement was actually present rather well. You make the correct observation that women and men have the same mental faculties (if taken as a whole, individuals will vary.) However you make a grand gesture of pointing out that women and men are the same. We know this, the original post implied this.
- hueving 11y agoNo, you missed the point. It's not that men and women are the same. It's that men do understand societal pressures and it's sexist to imply otherwise.
- scott_s 11y agoThe societal pressures tend to be different, and it is not sexist to say that members of each gender may not immediately understand the particulars of the pressure they receive.
- KaiserPro 11y agotake the diabetes example, by saying it is hard to understand what its like to have diabetes, does that make me a diabet-ist? no. its just pointing out that empathy is a difficult skill.
- Jean-Philipe 11y ago> Sorry, but I'm going to have to call out this statement as sexist. Here we go again. Somebody pointing out gender bias is blamed for being sexist.
- _Codemonkeyism 11y agoThe comment is blamed for being sexist because "It's often hard for men to understand the societal pressure placed on women" as this is making wide sweeping assumptions about men behaviour based on the world view of the poster not because of pointing out gender bias.
- dwild 11y agoIt's not because you are pointing out gender bias that you doesn't say sexist things.
- d0lph 11y ago> To be clear, I'm not calling you sexist. Same paragraph ...
- randyrand 11y agoMaking sweeping generalizations about a gender is sexist. You might as well be saying women are more suited for child rearing and sandwich making.
- kaitai 11y agoThe poster is not saying that social malleability differs between genders, but that social pressures differ. When's the last time you were hollered at to smile more, for instance?
- mcv 11y agoBoth genders are subjected to the pressure to conform to social expectations, and those pressures by themselves are often harmful and holding us back. But the pressures exerted on men and women are often very different, and it is important to be aware of those differences. Only by being aware of these pressures and understanding the differences, can we really address them and do something about them. That women are expected to be polite and accommodating is absolutely sexist, and resisting that pressure can sometimes be just as dangerous as giving in to it. But that men are expected to not cry and be strong and dominant and all that crap, that is just as harmful. To men, and to society.
- maaku 11y agoBut if you don't conform to social pressures you are either an "asshole" or a "bitch" depending on your gender. Being an asshole is socially acceptable if you are successful. Being a bitch is not under any circumstances.
- mpweiher 11y agoWut? (Some) Successful/attractive women carry their bitchiness as a badge of honour. As in "I am so attractive/successful, I can be as bitchy as I please". Which is why some people are attracted to bitches/assholes.
- maaku 11y agoAnd people talk derogatorily about her behind her back. But successful assholes? Heaps of praise. (Think: Steve Jobs).
- clbrook 11y agoThis discussion reminds me of a Margaret Atwood quotation: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” Perhaps this can shed a new perspective on why women and men may or may not bend to societal pressures differently.